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Sarnia-area farmer harvests around crashed airplane

Free Press staff

Tuesday, October 31, 2017
9:20:44 EDT AM

This photo posted on social media by Sarnia-area farmer Clark Aitken -- it shows a farm machine harvesting corn around the wreckage of a plane that landed on his field last week -- is drawing plenty of attention.

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The two-seat plane that made an emergency landing near Sarnia last Thursday was rescued by the heavy piece of farm machinery Monday – and the photo of the impromptu recovery operation is getting plenty of attention online.

A picture of the combine freeing the plane from its cornfield confine, posted on Twitter by Clark Aitken, has been shared more than 200 times and earned more than 600 likes in just one day.

“I’ve never seen as many shares as that,” said the Parkland Farms production manager.

The pilot of the plane walked out of the cornfield late last Thursday, escorted by firefighters who found him after a 90-minute search.

Emergency crews were called out to the scene at about 11 p.m. last Thursday to an area between Waubuno Road and Telfer Road, south of Sarnia.

Firefighters were using a 115-foot tower truck and an infrared camera to search the area when one of the firefighters happened to spot a light in the field. The pilot had moved outside the small plane and was standing on top of it, waving a flashlight to attract the attention of searchers, St. Clair Twp. fire chief Walt Anderson said last week.

At the time, emergency crews deemed it easier to fetch the plane when the corn came off, Aitken said.

He said the farmers carefully inched around the aircraft with their machinery Monday and didn’t notice a lot of damage to the plane.

“I don’t know what the owner is going to do or how they’ll go from there,” said Aitken, who in 35 years of farming has never harvested anything like this.